How many surrealists does it take to screw in a lightbulb.
The fish.
Surrealism aims to show the reality that exceeds realism; the dream-like absurd that is beyond the rational, common-sensical and practical. Beyond control engineering.
And you know “How many engineers would it take to screw in a lightbulb?” —- “Minimally two, and it would have to be a very large lightbulb.”
Even if the insights of surrealism are common-place, for example, that the eye is a false mirror of the world, I like is that they become real (if the surrealist is talented.)
False Mirror by Magritte; the idea, I suppose is that we see what’s already within us.
“The greatest obstacle to discovering the shape of the earth, the continents, and the oceans was not ignorance but the illusion of knowledge.” What I particularly like is the falseness of the mirror is shown as both false and true. The world is rarely this or that. Another insight / joke.
We all have masks, especially with those we love.
I imagine most I could make second-rate surrealistic works. The way to know your work is second rate it’s beautiful and insightful, but not funny.
Creation of Man-the-militant. Kuksi. It’s well done, and interesting (a retake on Michelangelo), but it’s not funny. See my cartoon in mechanical v civil engineers joke.
And then there is bad modern art. You could argue that this isn’t surreal, but some sort of other modern art, or post modern art. But that’s all false: it’s just bad art.
Bad modern art: little skill, little meaning, no humor. If you have to ask: “is it art?” It usually isn’t.
If you buy something like this, and put it in your corporate headquarters lobby, the joke’s on you, and the artist is laughing his or her way to the bank. Here is a link to why surrealism should be funny, And why architecture should not be (someone’s got to live in that joke).
R. E. Buxbaum, August 5, 2013